Running on Empty

Isaiah 43:19-21, Matthew 11:1-11

There are seasons when life feels like a long stretch of road and we’re watching the fuel gauge sink lower and lower. We tell ourselves, “I can make it a bit further,” but the truth is we’re not always sure. The holidays can bring this into sharp focus. Grief can feel heavier. Loneliness more piercing. Expectations more exhausting. Finances more strained. Schedules more crowded. And even if everything looks fine on the outside, inside we may be quietly wondering how long we can keep going. That is the moment John the Baptist is living in—and it’s the moment I want to explore through one powerful Advent story.

In December of 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer—pastor, theologian, and member of the resistance against Hitler—sat in a prison cell at Tegel Military Prison in Berlin. The charges against him were still murky, but he knew enough to sense the danger closing in. His days were filled with waiting: waiting for news, waiting for letters, waiting for interrogation, waiting for anything that might shift the course of his life. The guards allowed him a small stack of belongings: a few letters, a notebook, and two things he treasured most—his hymnal and his worn Bible. As Advent approached, he found himself doing what generations of the faithful have done in dark seasons: waiting and hoping and feeling the limits of his own strength. Bonhoeffer knew what it meant to run on empty. He knew what it meant to wonder what God was up to. He knew what it meant to ask, “Is this still the story I thought it was? Is Christ still the One?” Just as John the Baptist did. And it was in that prison cell that Bonhoeffer wrote one of the most profound lines about Advent ever penned: “Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent. One waits, hopes, and does this or that or the other—things that are really of no consequence—while the door is shut and can only be opened from the outside.” It is a line that could have been written by John himself, waiting in confinement, unable to change his circumstances, holding on to hope he wasn’t sure he still had.

Both Dietrich and John were men of conviction. Both had dedicated their lives to preparing the way for God’s kingdom. Both expected God to act with clarity and power. But instead they found themselves in situations that felt like contradiction. John expected a Messiah like Moses—someone who would confront the empire, mobilize the people, and overturn injustice. Instead, Jesus was quietly healing, teaching, lifting up the poor, restoring the broken, and preaching good news—one person at a time, one village at a time. And Bonhoeffer, committed to justice and peace, found himself watching the machinery of evil grow more brazen while he sat and waited in a cell. There is a particular kind of emptiness that comes when the world does not look the way we hoped God would shape it. The Baptist felt it. Bonhoeffer felt it. And many of us feel it at different points in our lives. The marriage that didn’t heal. The diagnosis that didn’t improve. The prayer that didn’t get the answer we longed for. The world that feels as fractured as ever. The season that brings more pressure than joy. And like John, we ask: “Lord, is this really what you promised? Is this how it’s supposed to look?”

What’s remarkable is how Jesus responds. He doesn’t shame John for doubting. He doesn’t tell him to believe harder. He doesn’t promise a sudden rescue. Instead, Jesus says: “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” Blind eyes opening. Lame legs walking. Those cast out being restored. The dead raised. The poor receiving good news. In other words: “John, look again. Hope is happening—just not in the way you expected.” Hope is not arriving like an army or a king. Hope is arriving like a healer, like a companion, like a whisper, like a seed pushing up through the soil. As Isaiah says: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth—do you not perceive it?” The new thing God is doing is often quiet enough to miss.

In that Advent of 1943, Bonhoeffer kept a reproduction of a Nativity painting by Albrecht Altdorfer. It showed the Holy Family huddled together in a building that looked half-bombed, the roof caving in, the walls crumbling. It looked more like a wartime shelter than a stable. He sent a letter home describing it: “We can and should celebrate Christmas even among the ruins. We must do this, even more intensively, because we do not know how much longer we have.” He was running on empty, but he had learned something: hope does not require fullness. Hope requires honesty. Hope requires waiting. Hope requires paying attention to the small signs of life. And out of that emptiness he wrote words that became a hymn still sung around the world: “By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered, we wait with confidence, befall what may. God is with us at night and in the morning and certainly on each new day.” Those words were not written by someone who felt strong. They were written by someone who felt held.

Most of us aren’t in a physical prison like the Baptist or Bonhoeffer, but many know what it feels like to be emotionally or spiritually confined—by grief, by fear, by expectations, by exhaustion, by a long season that won’t let up. Advent doesn’t ask us to pretend we’re full of joy; Advent simply asks us to wait and to be honest about what we have left in the tank. Hope that trembles is still hope. Faith that questions is still faith. Love that feels tired is still love. Jesus’ response to John shows us that doubt is not the opposite of faith; it may well be one of its most honest expressions.

Here is one simple practice for this week: each day, notice one small sign of life. Just one. Something that reminds you that God is not finished—a kindness, a moment of peace, a breath, a memory, a scripture, a sunrise, a word from a friend. Write it down. Carry it with you. That is often how God’s new thing begins—quiet, steady, persistent.

Friends, if this Advent finds you feeling tired, or worn, or quietly asking questions like John did, know this: you are not alone. You are not failing. You are not forgotten. When we are running on empty, God is not. When our hope runs thin, God’s hope does not. When our expectations collapse, God’s promises stand. And God is already doing a new thing—in our lives, in our community, and in the world—often in small signs of life that we are invited to notice. So if you are running on empty this Advent season, hear Jesus’ gentle words: “Look again. There is life here. God is nearer than you think.” May it be so.